Man has lost the capacity to foresee and foretell. He will end by destroying the earth.               ….. Albert Schweitzer

Am I Quixote? 

 

I read from Don Cervantes of a simple aging soul

Who dared to hold a vision unto which he might stay true.

He rode, though much derided, to fulfil his noble goal

To challenge every tyrant while defending those oppressed

and mend this world before his life was through.

 

My lance tilts so at corporate greed and politician’s lies

That stride across the landscape of the world where I must live.

These windmills that I’m charging and would strive for their demise

Are giants that destroy the earth to take all they might take

with never thought to what they yet might give.

 

Too few the corporations now where selflessness is seen

Too great the selfish influences poured upon our youth.

While governments and bureaucrats and all those in between

Just tell us what serves their agendas, feeds their own desires,

instead of telling us the honest truth.

 

It seems their goals are not providing us with that we need

But that for which their balance sheets would rather we should buy.

Or that which earns them votes from satisfying wanton greed

With scarce a thought to what will happen once the land is bled

and waterways and oceans left to die.

 

The air’s now rank with toxic fume. The sea with plastic filled.

The rivers flow with fertilizers spread on barren lands.

The lakes are turned to tailing ponds. The forests all but killed.

While industry churns ever onward multiplying its guilt

yet showing us its bleached and sterile hands.

 

Too few are we who stand to challenge; muted yet our voice

That’s smothered by these tyrants’ falsehoods, drowned by those in power.

Too ignorant the ones oppressed, not knowing of the choice

They need to make to save tomorrow, save our future’s hope

that fades within my vision by the hour.

 

But who am I to ride against these giant flailing mills

That vandalize my world with no containment or concern?

And who am I to match my mind ‘gainst governmental wills?

An errant knight in rusted armour ‘pon a scrawny horse

that few would miss should never he return?

 

So should I put away this armour, shed this lance and shield

And wait, like all the others, ‘til the sun dies in the west?

Or should I charge and charge again with all that I can wield

To fight these corporate monsters so to honour what I see

as such a crucial, such a noble quest?

So I at least can say I tried to mend the world before I died,

and didn’t acquiesce like all the rest.